Will I love The Shape of Ancient Thought?

McEvilley’s comprehensive book was an eye-opener for me. He breaks new ground by exploring in great detail the fascinating diffusion of ideas between ancient Greece and ancient India, a topic ignored by most scholars.

He demolishes “Orientalist” presumptions of Western superiority over Eastern cultures, showing how Indian ideas like reincarnation and a holistic conception of the universe were adapted early on by Greek thinkers, while Greek logic and dialectical argumentation were absorbed by the Indians.

He convincingly demonstrates, in his words, that “every mystical element in Indian thought can be found in Greek thought too, and every rational element in… show more.

I was delighted by McEvilley’s learned and systematic effort to compare ideas and practices from the Mediterranean and Indian worlds. I had attempted similar, much smaller-scale comparisons in my own earliest academic work on Aristotle—seeking to understand neglected Aristotelian ideas in the light of Buddhist thought. However, McEvilley managed a much wider and more knowledgeable discussion, taking ancient thought more seriously than the majority of scholars.

Our predecessors did a good job of analyzing, interrogating, and controlling the many shades and phantoms of human consciousness. We may have surpassed them in the control of the external world, but we still… show more.

This is the best book in English that illuminates the intensive interpenetration of Eastern and Western thought that took place in the ancient world, when half-naked yogis wandered the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, and Greek philosophers traveled to the Hindu Kush to study Buddhism. This brilliant book helped me make sense of the Eastern and Western parts of myself, reflections of my former incarnations in Greece, Tibet, and Japan, and helped me to understand that we are all of one mind.